Fiancé hates my family

[Dad394]

Getting married in 5 months and my fiancée hates my family, it’s ruining everything.

We had a dream wedding planned since we was young in Portugal, when we expressed to my family the plans and that our wedding is going to be “child free” all hell broke loose.

My Mother said she was not coming, my other family members said I was silly and stupid and should rethink as my brother and 2 sisters have really young kids, all under 3. We want a child free wedding and I give them so many options and offered to pay for other family members to come to look after the kids for the 6 hours the wedding was on. All fell of deaf ears.

This led to us changing everything and are now getting married on our own abroad and having a UK party for family. Now my wife to be feels my mum has ruined the best moment/time of her life, and she will never get this back, something she has always dreamed of and my family has ruined for her. She has so much anger towards my family and even though my family has said sorry and that they would make it work, it was already ruined for us. 

I have explained to my family all how I feel, how they have made us feel and what they have done and ruined. And told them to just not talk about the wedding coming up to us and just try move on as it’s really ruined the relationship.

I am now arguing everyday with my partner and my relationship with my family is at the lowest it has ever been, I feel like I really have no option but to be a punching bag for everyone to express how they feel, if I speak to my family my partner gets angry as it’s always wedding related, if I don’t speak to my family the relationship gets worse.

My partner now hates me speaking to my family, wants to know every conversation I have with them even if it’s on the phone I have to explain what was said. My mother is still talking about the wedding party to me 3/4 times a week to try to feel involved and make things easier and it’s infuriating my partner and I told her to stop talking about it. To the point if I get a text from my family it will ruin our entire day, as my partner thinks they are trying to get involved and she does not want them involved or talking about her wedding. She said she doesn’t want my mum to be allowed to talk about the wedding to me also.

Its gotten to a really low point and I have no idea what to do as I am now stuck in the middle, does my partner need to calm down and realise I could lose all my family over this and work together to sort it, or do my family need to back off and realise they have ruined everything and give us space for now.

Forgot, if you invited your niece (who is a distant relative, and not closely related ie sister/brother/your own children)...

WTF? Her niece is her fiancee's very close relative. It's his sibling's child.
My DD is devoted to her nieces, and would be horrified at any suggestion that they shouldn't be at her wedding. I'd wonder about her future with her partner if he saw those little girls in that way @IAmWomanHearMeRoar1

Is your fiancee's name Meghan ?

Your fiancee wants a child free wedding.
That means no flower girls ???

If we're being pedantic, child-free does mean no children but most weddings I have been to that have been child-free make exceptions for close family e.g. nephews and nieces. In fact, we're attending one such wedding this year (invite says child-free but we've been told we can bring DS).

Of course if he's noisy during the vows I will leave the venue until they're finisued, and I will no doubt have to leave early because he's at an age where a late night is no fun for anyone. Hopefully he doesn't manage to trip over any waiters carrying trays (quietly confident about this once since we've managed to avoid any such incidents so far).

I would've respected the couple's decision if they wanted the wedding to be totally child-free - it is their wedding after all - but if that had been the case then either my partner or I wouldn't have been able to attend. Which would have been a shame since it is close family.

If people want their wedding to be child-free, that is fine. But it does not follow that weddings are intrinsically child-free events. Are people going to be stripping down during the reception? How odd. There is nothing 18+ about wedding vows. Rather, weddings are about the bride and groom joining together with their two families to celebrate becoming a new family. The presence of children is appropriate as children are part of each family. The presence of children is appropriate because you invite people you love to a wedding and hopefully you love the children who are part of each family. But, if a couple want a child-free wedding, that is their prerogative.

Now having a child-free destination wedding is a different thing. Because there you are expecting your family who are the parents of young children to make an especially big sacrifice in time, finances, effort, for your wedding, and you are majorly inconveniencing those same children and then telling them they aren't welcome to the party. Or, you don't care whether or not those family members who have young children attend your wedding or not. Neither indicates that you really care about those family members. But still, you do you. It's your wedding.

All of this!

First of all we only have a condensed version of what happened from one person so the way one person views it is totally different than another’s. We have no way of really knowing what was said or how it was said, words and tones matter in any situation. If his family merely said this won’t work for us that’s one thing but if they began saying it was stupid and they weren’t going to do it that is totally another. If it was the couples dream the family should not try to make them cancel everything and rearrange it to suit his family. On the other side the bride to be is not acting correctly either if it meant that much to the couple they should not have cancelled their plans just gone ahead and had the wedding they wanted. It sounds like the groom needs to develop a backbone and tell his mum to butt out. Fiancée needs to find a way to deal with the disappointment or the whole family is going to be at war with each other forever or the wedding needs to cancelled another option the couple just elopes and saves their money.